by Tim Johnston
You frightened her, Gordon, Meredith telling him later. And Gordon saying, I frightened her? I frightened her?
There was the sound of car tires on the packed snow and the sound returned him to his kitchen—smoke gone, girl gone, wife gone—and he sat listening, frowning, thinking Doc Van Allen was back, had forgotten something. But when he went to the window it was not the light-blue Olds he saw coming to a stop in the drive but a dark-blue pickup. The sun was on the windshield and the driver sat with the truck idling, white clouds chugging from the tailpipe—rechecking his directions or his information, whatever it was, this dumb cluck, and Gordon standing at the window looking for the guy to turn the truck around and drive away again. Instead the exhaust clouds stopped and the driver’s door swung open and a young man stepped out in a billcap and shut the door again and faced the house, and although the young man’s face was half in shadow under the bill, Gordon knew him at once. Knew him by shape and by stance and by movement and by other signs he couldn’t name but that were as old as the young man was himself.
I will be God damned. I will be God damned. His heart pounding and all the blood going out of him.
The boy took a few steps toward the porch and stopped and came no farther. He’d seen Gordon in the window. He stood with his hands in his jacket pockets, looking at Gordon and waiting.
Gordon stepped from the window and sat on the bench by the door and pulled on his boots, and every movement was strange, like déjà vu, and the side of his neck was beating and he fumbled with the laces as if his fingers were half-frozen and when he got them tied he held his hands before him to see if they were shaking but they were not, they were steady. He got into his jacket and opened the door and stepped into the winter brightness and the boy was still there—he was no trick of the eyes, no dream—and Gordon closed the door and went down the porchsteps, never once looking away from the boy and the boy never once looking away from him and all of it no trick, no dream. He walked up to the boy and stopped short of him and stood looking into his shadowed eyes, and the boy lifted a hand and tilted back the bill of the cap and returned his hand to his jacket pocket.
“If you’re gonna slug me go ahead and slug me, Gordon,” he said.
Gordon felt the skin under his left eye twitch. “What makes you think I’m gonna slug you?”
“Those two fists at the ends of your arms.”
Gordon held the boy’s eyes. Then he brought his hands together and ran one through the grip of the other as if they were cold. As if that was the only way to straighten them out.
He said, “I’d say you got some nerve showing up here but I know you haven’t got any nerve. So now I’m thinking maybe you’re just plain crazy.”
“I might be.”
“You might be shot for trespassing.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, after last night.”
“Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“I thought you might.”
“I got no idea what that means.”
“It means this,” the boy said, and he turned and stepped back to the truck, moving around it to the far rear fender. And looking back at Gordon he tapped his fingers on the metal.
Gordon didn’t move. Then he came around and, taking his eyes off the boy for the first time, leaned down to see. And stood again.
“You think I did that?”
“It crossed my mind.”
“You think I’m the only one in this town who’d take a shot at you?”
The boy didn’t answer.
“Where did that even happen?” Gordon said.
“In the park.”
Gordon stared at him. “Henry Sibley?”
“Yes, sir.”
A black insect swam across Gordon’s vision. “You were driving through that park at night?”
The boy was about to answer, but just then there was a sound from the house and they both turned to see an upstairs window raised and a face framed briefly in the dark square, a girl’s face, pale and half-covered in dark strings of hair, before the curtains fell and the face was gone again.
When he turned back to him the boy was still watching the window. The knuckle of his throat rose and fell. Finally he turned back to Gordon and stared at him. As if Gordon might bother to explain what he’d just seen.
Gordon said, “I won’t even try to tell you all the ways you are crazy if you think I shot your truck but I will say this. If I was gonna go to all the trouble to lay down on you with a rifle I damn sure wouldn’t put my bullet in the side of your truck.”
The boy had no response.
“And one more thing,” Gordon said. “If I was gonna shoot you, why wouldn’t I of done it ten years ago? Why would I do it now?”
“Maybe you’d figure nobody’d suspect you, all these years later.”
“Just like nobody’d still suspect you, all these years later.”
The boy stood looking at him. Then he looked down at his boots.
“I’m just a dumbfounded son of a bitch,” Gordon said. “Whatever gave you the idea to come back here anyhow?”
“My old dog died.” The boy looked up.
“I know it. I helped your mother bury him.”
“I know you did.”
Gordon did not believe the boy would go so far as to thank him for that and he was right.
“That was for your mother and your brother, period.”
“I know it, Gordon.”
“And God damn it, whatever happened to respect?”
“Respect?”
“Respect. Like calling a man by his proper name.”
The boy seemed to think on that. Then he said, “I guess that stopped when you stopped having any respect for me.”
“Respect for you. Are you standing there shitting me?”
“No, sir. You never even tried to ask me directly about any of it. You never gave me a chance.”
Gordon stared at him. Jesus God what was happening here. Just go inside, his mind told him. Begged him. Just turn and go on inside before you kill this boy.
“Is that what this is?” he said. “You come out here to tell me all about it?”
“No, sir. I came out here to see if you’d let me say one thing. If you’d give me the chance to do that.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. I just wanted to try. I didn’t want to—” He hesitated. “I didn’t want to go away again without trying.”
Gordon stared into the boy’s eyes. Somewhere in there was the young boy he’d known, before he grew up and turned into this other thing.
“You didn’t do it, I suppose,” said Gordon. “That’s what you wanted to say.”
The boy held his eyes. “Sometimes—” he began, and swallowed. “There were times when I thought maybe I had, Mr. Burke. That I’d hit her with my truck but just didn’t know it. That I’d blacked out or something.”
Gordon’s heart was banging. He watched the boy.
“I’d been drinking, Mr. Burke. I’d had a few beers—”
“I already know that. That’s in the record.”
“Yes, sir. And it was dark, and windy, and trees everywhere . . . and I thought it was possible. It could have happened that way. It could have. But even if it did—even if I hit her, by accident, how did she end up in the river?”
“Because you put her there. You panicked and you put her there. And she was still breathing.”
The boy shook his head. “No, Mr. Burke. That’s what the sheriff said. That was his version.”
“The sheriff had you in the park—right time, right place. And afterwards you drove off to that cabin.” Gordon’s heart pounding with rage like it had all happened yesterday. He looked at the truck again. It was not the same truck but it might as well have been. “Sheriff had you,” he said. “Dead to rights. And he let you go.”
The boy was staring at him, nodding slowly. “I know how it looked, Mr. Burke. I’d been at the bar, I’d been in the park. The deputy had pulled me over
. I drove up to my uncle’s cabin. I know how it looked. But—”
“Hold on,” Gordon said, and the boy stopped. “Pulled you over?”
“Sir?”
“You said the deputy pulled you over.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pulled you over when?”
“As I was coming out of the park.”
“That night?”
“Yes, sir.”
Gordon shook his head, his mind already reversing, searching itself. “Pulled you over for what?”
“For being in the park after dark.”
And his mind went all the way back then, ten years in time . . . Sutter showing up at his house the first time, and then the other times. The officers going through her room, her dresser drawers. The questions: What time did she go out? Did she call? How was she getting around without her license, without a car? Who was she seeing? He had not been in his right mind but he would remember this—he would know if they’d told him the boy had been pulled over coming out of the park. It would be in the record. There would be no question he’d been there.
“That makes no sense,” he now said. “Why wouldn’t I know about that? Why wouldn’t everybody?”
The boy was silent. Shut down. Staring blankly at him. Then he said, “They never told you I got pulled over?”
“No, they didn’t. And I know that report backwards and forwards and there is no mention of any deputy pulling you over. Says you admitted to being in the park.”
The boy staring at him, taking this in.
“Why wouldn’t that be in the report?” Gordon said.
“I don’t know, Mr. Burke.”
“You don’t know? Is this some kind of game?”
“No, sir. I’m trying to understand it too.”
“You better by God hurry up.”
The boy shook his head. He said, “If you didn’t know about it, Mr. Burke, it means nobody knew about it. They’d have told you everything they knew. It means the sheriff . . .” He didn’t finish.
“It means the sheriff what?”
“Didn’t know,” said the boy. “He didn’t know the deputy pulled me over.”
“How would he not know that?”
The boy was silent.
“What are you saying,” said Gordon, “—the deputy never told the sheriff? That it just slipped his goddam mind?”
The boy said nothing.
“Speak up,” Gordon said.
“That night,” the boy said, “when he pulled me over, the deputy, he walked all around my truck with his flashlight and then he let me go. No DUI. Not even a ticket for being in the park at night.”
“So?”
“So he would have seen it, Mr. Burke. He would’ve seen it then—wouldn’t he have?” The boy’s eyes had a glassy, faraway look to them. Like his mind had wandered off somewhere.
“Seen what?” Gordon said. “Seen what,” he snapped, and the boy came back, blinking. Then he pulled his hand from his pocket and held the hand palm-up to him. As if offering him something to eat.
It was a square of white cloth, so thin and light it would’ve blown from his hand but for the thumb holding it there.
Gordon’s heart began to slip. “What is that?” he said thickly.
The boy said nothing, and Gordon’s heart slipped all the way into coldness, into blackness. He knew what it was. He knew what it was and he knew there was no other like it in the world and he knew that only a handful of people even knew about it—ripped from her blouse, they said, ripped clean off and never recovered—and only one person in the world could have it and here he was. And then with no other thought or even movement he was aware of, he had the boy by the jacket and had thrown him up against the truck. No idea what he was saying, just the sensation of speech in his throat, as if he’d gone deaf. The boy holding his wrists, his cap fallen away, and though his head shook with the violence of Gordon’s grip his face was calm, and his voice was calm too, saying, “Mr. Burke . . . Mr. Burke, let me say one thing—”
What did Gordon say? Did he say anything? Did he say: Say it, you son of a bitch? Did he say: Say the last thing you have to say? He only knew he let the boy stand straight, keeping his grip on his jacket, the boy’s hands gripping his wrists, and the square of cloth pressed between the boy’s hand and his wrist like some thin bandage he could feel all the way to his heart, and at last the boy said, “Why would I show it to you, Mr. Burke? Why would I do that?” These words and all sound reaching Gordon through a dull roaring like water rushing in his ears.
“Because you want to torment me. Because you want to see if I will kill you.”
“No, sir.”
“Do you think I won’t? Do you think I care what happens to me?”
“No, sir, I don’t, but that’s not why.”
“Why then, God damn you.”
“Because . . .” said the boy. “Because it was on the truck. It was caught up in the license plate—”
Gordon renewed his grip and gave the boy a shake. “Boy—what are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you that that deputy shined his flashlight all around that truck and didn’t see this piece of cloth, but when I got home I saw it right off. Plain as day.”
“Is that supposed to prove something?”
“No, sir. Only . . .”
“Only what.”
“Only why didn’t he ever say he pulled me over? Why wouldn’t he say that?”
Gordon closed and opened his eyes. Black flies swarming all through his vision. A great hard fist pounding on his heart.
“Why didn’t you say it?” he said. “Why didn’t you say the deputy pulled you over?”
“Because I thought they already knew. I thought the sheriff knew. But he never asked me, Mr. Burke. He never asked me about the deputy pulling me over.”
The boy staring at him and Gordon blinking—blinking away the black flies until he could see the boy’s eyes again. Open and blue and looking into his.
“The deputy,” Gordon said. “That’s what you’re telling me. The deputy put it on your truck.”
The boy said nothing.
“He put it on your truck and he never told the sheriff he pulled you over.”
“Why wouldn’t he tell him, Mr. Burke?”
“Because it never happened. Because you’ve had ten years to cook up this story.”
“No, sir. I’ve had ten years to wonder how this piece of cloth got on my truck. And all I’ve ever known is I never touched your daughter, Mr. Burke. Me or my truck.”
“But you kept it,” Gordon said. “Why did you keep it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know . . .” The boy shaking his head. “I thought I might need it.”
“The perverts always keep something. Like a kind of . . .” He couldn’t think of the word. He was so tired, suddenly. Dead tired. He needed to sit down.
He let the boy go. His hands were cramped and he put them to his skull and ran them backwards, as if to restore order to a head of hair gone wild. He looked toward the woods but did not see them. The whole world a meaningless flat arrangement of shape and color, sickening to see. He turned back to the boy and with effort brought his face into focus. He could see the streaks of yellow in the blue irises.
“Why now?” Gordon said. “Why show this thing now? Do you think anyone will believe you?”
“No, sir. I just didn’t want to be the only one anymore. If something happened—” He looked off, toward the house, and looked back. “I just wanted you to hear it, that’s all.” He put his hand into his jacket pocket, the square of cloth disappeared, and he turned to collect his cap from the bed of the truck.
“And all this while,” Gordon said. “Ten years. You never thought of this before—that it was the deputy?”
The boy turned back to him holding the cap. He stood looking into the bowl of it as if finding something there that shouldn’t be.
“I was young, Mr. Burke.” He looked up and gave a kind of smile, shaking his head.
“I just didn’t think a man, a cop . . .”
He put the cap on his head and snugged it down.
“Moran,” said Gordon.
“Sir?”
“The deputy. Was it Moran?”
The boy held his eyes. “Yes, sir, it was him.”
PART IV
41
She awoke once again in strangeness: the bed not her bed and the room not her room, and neither was it the hospital, or her father’s living room. Dim light of day behind the curtains—dawn or dusk, she had no idea. And, oh God, so hot under these blankets, the comforter, whatever else was piled on top of her . . . Audrey shoving at these, kicking and twisting until it all slumped off her and she lay there on her back, getting her breath and feeling the cool air find her.
She was wearing the same flannel shirt of her father’s she’d put on when she first got the chills however many days ago, and now she lifted the sleeve to her face and smelled it, but it smelled like nothing and she knew it had not been taken off her and that it must smell terribly, as she herself must.
She sat up, putting her feet to the floor, and sudden moons of color floated across the room. A half glass of water stood on the nightstand and she drank it down, then pushed up from the bed and got to her feet and stood through a second wave of colors and dizziness—then stood listening for any sound in the house that wasn’t her own heavy breathing.
No clock in the room, and no sign of her father’s phone or his watch. There was a bureau and a vanity and a chair, all in the same unpainted, pinewood style as the nightstand. The bureau top was bare but a middle drawer was pulled partway out, as if recently opened but then incompletely shut in the haste of dressing. She crossed to it and pulled it all the way open. Sweaters. Folded, of muted colors, soft to the touch. Clean-smelling when she bent to smell. In the drawer above she found panties and bras and camisoles. She lifted one bra to see the cup size and put it down again. In the drawer below, a bright bonanza of socks.